The Miocene sands of the Swiss Jura Mountains, long exploited in quarries for the construction industry, have yielded abundant fossil remains of large mammals. A third species, Deinotherium levius , from the locality of Charmoille in Ajoie, is reported herein for the first time in Switzerland. The study is completed by a discussion on the palaeobiogeography of deinotheres at the European scale. The order Proboscidea currently regroups large mammals whose common features include tusks and a long, muscular trunk.
Within the superorder Afrotheria, its sister group is Sirenia dugongs and manatees. Its extant representatives belong to the Elephantidae family with only three species of elephants living in Africa or Asia Loxodonta africana, Loxodonta cyclotis and Elephas maximus. However, this order was much more diversified in the fossil record. The proboscideans have an African origin hypothetically with the stem genus Eritherium , found in the early late Paleocene of Morocco Gheerbrant, , and indubitably with other primitive forms as the small-sized Phosphatherium and Numidotherium or the first large-sized proboscidean Barytherium.
These primitive forms were only found in the late early Eocene, and the late Eocene and early Oligocene, respectively, of Africa Tassy, ; Sanders et al. It should be noted that the relationship of Eritherium is unresolved. After Gheerbrant et al. The gomphotheres Gomphotheriidae , the mammutids Zygolophodon and the deinotheres Deinotheriidae are the earliest proboscideans found outside of Africa in the fossil record.
This geographic change allowed remarkable terrestrial mammal exchanges including the gomphotheres and the deinotheres e. Within the phylogeny of proboscideans Fig. The differentiation between deinotheres and Elephantiformes could have occurred as early as the end of the Eocene e.
Delmer, However, phylogenetic relationships within the Deinotheriidae family remain uncertain to this day. The oldest and most primitive deinothere, Chilgatherium harrisi Sanders et al.
